Prehistoric Park Bio Files
by PrehistoryFanatic
Summary: Short insights into the various animals that Nigel brought back from extinction.
1. Dallas

In the sweltering heat of South Africa, a fearsome beast sought refuge from the blistering midday sun in the shade of a large candelabra tree surrounded by tall bushes, not too far away from the lake that has become her new home. Her massive jaws were gaping wide open in order to provide cooling by evaporation from the mouth lining.

Not too long ago, she, like any large carnivore, would have lived day by day on alert, constantly looking for her next meal while having to ward off enemies, most of which were her own species, from biting a chunk out of her. But those days were now behind her.

Food was no longer a concern, as her captors would regularly drop large slabs of meat into her enclosure for her to devour. It tasted mammalian, not reptilian, but it made little difference to her. Now her biggest worry was to avoid overheating after her routine basking period in the early morning sun rays.

For she was the first of her species to be granted the chance to live out the rest of her days in peace within the confines of captivity, a voracious predator that once challenged the mighty tyrannosaurs for the title of Laramidia's apex predator.

She was a _Deinosuchus riograndensis_, named Dallas by the park's staff, a massive alligator brought back from the late Cretaceous of Texas, 74 million years ago.

Weighing 3 tonnes and stretching 8 m in length, she was a behemoth by today's crocodilian standards, dwarfing the Nile crocodiles who resided in the neighboring lake. A male of her species could reach an additional 2.5 m and a few more tonnes. Her size betrayed the fact that she was entering her late 30s.

A chain link fence separated the two enclosures to make sure Dallas didn't get the idea to go snacking on her smaller cousins. Throughout their 200 million year long evolutionary history crocodiles have never been fussy eaters.

That was one of the reasons why they were such hardy survivors, apex predators that clung on to their niche as riparian predators for over 100 million years. That, however, was hardly the only niche these archosaurs had exploited through the eons. Throughout the Mesozoic, many different types of crocodiles came and went, from shark-like marine hunters to fully terrestrial sheep-like browsers.

By Dallas' time, many of these more outlandish forms were long gone but the riparian crocodiles were more successful than ever, being the dominant freshwater predators throughout the globe.

The _Deinosuchus _was nothing if not a major success story, a versatile hunter that emerged during the height of the Western Interior Seaway's glory and both conquered and became the undisputed king of the vast estuaries that stretched all along the coasts of Laramidia to the west and Appalachia to the east. It hunted in both fresh and saltwater, and it dinned on pretty much anything it could lock its deadly jaws around, from land-dwelling dinosaurs like _Parasaurolophus _and _Kritosaurus _looking for a drink to the various animals that swam the coastal waters; giant turtles, elasmosaurs and even sharks like the dreaded _Squalicorax _were on the menu for a full-grown Deinosuchus.

But that hardly meant that these gargantuan gators had it easy, far from it. They had to endure a very tough, cruel way of life. For any crocodile, growing up and living to reproduce was a very slim chance in the wild, no matter from which chapter in Earth's history they came from. Dallas was a big female but the fact that she had managed to reach this size meant that all of her siblings had to pay the price for it.

This monstrous predator started life as a tiny, big-eyed hatchling who was merely one amongst a clutch of 50 eggs which her mother had laid in a nest near the brackish waters they called home and covered it with vegetation which upon decomposition would provide the heat needed to incubate the eggs.

Like with most expecting mothers, she lost over half of her offspring before they even hatched. She had guarded the nest as best as she could, even negating to feed herself for long periods of time but that wasn't enough to protect it from nest raiders that never stopped coming.

When Dallas broke through her shell with her egg tooth and chirped for her mother, the reptile that was summoned by her and dug through the nest, exposing her to sunlight for the first time, wasn't her mother but a _Palaeosaniwa_, a 3 m goanna that was one of the biggest threats to _Deinosuchus _nests. Dallas and her remaining 20 or so siblings were nearly eaten if not for the timely arrival of their mother.

Their mother greeted them with a low, rumbling growl and carried the tiny killers to the water in her massive jaws, where she would protect and take care of them for the following year. Dallas started out with a series of yellow bands around her body which served as camouflage, which she eventually traded for a simple uniform blackish-gray, counter-shade coloration as she grew older, and spent her first year homing in her hunting skills by preying on small fish, frogs, crayfish, and insects.

She quickly learned about the harsh cruelty of nature as she witnessed most of her siblings getting eaten. Some were caught by smaller crocodiles like _Brachychampsa_, others were swallowed by fish like _Melvius _and gars, while some got snatched up by hungry _Navajodactylus_. A few were even cannibalized. By the time their mother ceased to protect them, only 3 of them were left and each struck out on their own.

Once she had reached 2 m, Dallas was relatively safe from most of her past foes and even started preying on some of them. But she was still an easy target for larger _Deinosuchus_, so she spent most of her younger years steering clear of her elders, with some close calls. From then on it was a waiting game as she steadily grew larger, and the laws of power gradually shifted in her favor, and step by step she graduated to bigger and bigger game. Once she had reached 6 m she caught her first large kill, an adolescent _Kosmoceratops _swimming through one of the rivers flowing into the sea.

From then on she was firmly on her way to becoming an apex predator with only other mature _Deinosuchus _posing a serious threat to her. Dallas bore several scars on her face and the rest of her body from past scuffles over food and territory.

But her own kin weren't the only competition she had to deal with. Their greatest terrestrial adversary was the _Bistahieversor_, large tyrannosaurs that sporadically invaded their estuary home following the migrating herds of duckbills and horned dinosaurs. During her final few days in Texas, Dallas recalled how a trio of them was lurking in the nearby forest, hounding the herd of _Parasaurolophus _which was passing through.

The three _Bistahieversor _slew an adult _Parasaurolophus _but made the mistake of eating their kill near the water's edge, which soon attracted the largest gators in the area, Dallas included.

Like with lions and Nile crocodiles, such encounters were rarely violent and for good reason. Both predators were equally matched in size, and both yielded powerful jaws, but neither party wanted to risk injury. _Deinosuchus _might have possessed large osteoderms for protection but _Bistahieversor _was adapted for attacking armored prey, but if _Deinosuchus _caught one of your limbs it would never let go.

Instead, such showdowns would boil down to a Mexican standoff, a show of intimidation which would often last for hours. Dallas didn't wait to see who was victorious and left with a chunk of meat in her jaws.

But the Western Interior Seaway was hardly any less hazardous. Dallas didn't venture into it until she was close to her current size. Large protostegidae turtles with their minimal shells were very appealing prey, as were the long-necked plesiosaurs like _Albertonectes _which were easy to kill, not to mention the bounty of large fish.

But going into the ocean would put them in direct competition with mosasaurs, giant sea lizards which could accurately be described as hybrids between crocodiles and sharks, ironically related to the goannas that threatened Dallas' kin as hatchlings. The largest like _Prognathodon _rivaled _Deinosuchus _in size and packed a nasty bite of their own. The predators usually avoided each other but every once in a while some would be more confrontational than others.

The tip of Dallas' tail was missing and this was a rather recent injury which she had sustained when she came across a dead _Magnapaulia _floating off the coast. The massive duckbill attracted various predators such as sharks and polycotylids, and Dallas quickly joined the feeding frenzy. A bold _Prognathodon _arrived on the scene and tried to drive her off, bitting her tail and cutting its tip off. He quickly retreated however after losing one of his front flippers to Dallas' death roll.

It was a rough life, but _Bistahieversor _and _Prognathodon _were now just an unpleasant memory, as were her own kin who would undoubtedly have challenged the seasoned female for this lake which she now had to herself, where food was literally tossed to her on a daily basis. Being a cold-blooded gator also meant that she wasn't itching for any exercise or exploring unless it involved finding prey. All and all, life has been pretty good for her ever since she followed that strange bipedal, hairless mammal through the bright light.

Dallas hadn't seen that adolescent-looking, yet strangely nearly adult-sized _Bistahieversor _since the day she had first arrived, and should that theropod invade her territory again she might not be so lucky the next time she tries dodging Dallas' jaws.

Dallas was supposed to be the park's most recent addition, but she wound up not being the only animal to jump into the present from the Campanian. A much smaller predator revealed himself as a stowaway from the past and his arrival had caused a bigger crisis for the park than any of the resident megafauna had ever managed to accomplish. He was eventually caught and placed into his own enclosure, but the crafty coyote-sized maniraptor had managed to escape it.

Dubbed Currie by the humans, the little dinosaur appeared on the jeep track cutting through the lake. He resembled a bird in almost every way except for his long, bony tail, clawed wings and scaly muzzle packed with tiny teeth, and he obviously couldn't fly.

He sported a coat of primarily black feathers, except on his haunches which were white along with a striking white stripe on each side of his face, both of which ran from below his eye down his back, similar to a chipmunk. His smooth head feathers were a dashing crimson color, which identified him as a male of his species.

Currie was a _Talos sampsoni_, a species of troodont native to southern Laramidia.

The sharp-eyed opportunist quickly spotted Dallas' motionless form in the bushes and immediately grew wary. This place was teeming with crocodiles and he knew that he was standing in a precarious position. Dallas noticed him but paid him no mind, such small dinosaurs were hardly a snack to a Deinosuchus, hardly worth the effort. Currie, however, didn't take any chances and bolted away from the crocodile-infested area.

This new world with its weird mishmash of animals, both familiar and completely alien, was confusing to the young _Talos_. He had considered running away from the park but was hesitant to do so.

Last time he did that after escaping from the stampeding long-necked dinosaur, he had spent a brief stint in the nearby shrubland savannah trying to find his way back home while also looking for food, where he quickly found himself being pursued by large predatory mammals with long ears and shaggy brown fur whom he managed to outrun only to bump into another abnormally large mammal with equally large ears, long whiskers and a yellow, spotted pelt who viciously attacked him and clawed him to protect her cubs.

Several more hostile encounters with the local mammalian carnivores, including one very small but very vicious black and white burrower had sent Currie packing back to the park where he saw that none of the resident wildlife would follow. This, of course, got him caught and placed in a cage.

Maybe if he was more careful he could avoid being recaptured. After all, hiding and staying undetected is what his kin did best.

...

**I was surprised to see that Prehistoric Park had a few fanfics floating around the internet, including some that give short biographies for the park's prehistoric residents, which inspired me to give my own take on it.**

**I didn't see any that focused on the Campanian animals from "Supercroc" so I choose them as the focus of this one-shot. Of course, it's also updated to fit current paleontological data. **

**I named the troodont after a certain well-known paleontologist (and also because it sounds similar to "scurry" XD), and no points for guessing where the **_**Deinosuchus **_**got her name XD **

**Would you like to see me make more of these? **


	2. Currie

Yes, hiding and being stealthy is what most troodonts excelled at. It had been their main survival strategy for eons.

Currie had found shelter within a small crevice located in the cliffs that encompassed the northern border of the park. Lining the cliffs was both a stream but also a strange sort of pathway that seemed to be made out of flat rock. Covering it were very bizarre tracks that didn't resemble the footprints of any kind of animal.

From his hiding spot, the _Talos _had a very good view of the park.

Below the cliffs stretched a vast grassy plain with a very clear pathway cutting through the middle. Crossing such an exposed landscape was something he wouldn't usually do, but based on his observations Currie was certain that no predators would be found there. As far as he could see all the strange animals that were present there were herbivores. All the big meat-eaters were apparently kept captive.

A large and seemingly dense forest located just beyond the southern border of the grassland was his intended destination.

Just this morning Currie had taken refuge in a small patch of forest near the vet's surgery, as forests had been the preferred home of troodonts in North America for 20 million years, a habitat that provided plenty of cover and small game. It was the kind of environment he was instinctively drawn to.

What also drew him to this location was the presence of other dinosaurs. Familiar dinosaurs at that.

At the western edge of the small forest was a creek that was home to a lone herbivore.

Currie had never seen this species before but it was very clearly a type of chasmosaur, the beak, the horns, the frill, the stocky body and short tail were all unmistakable. Currie likened it to a _Titanoceratops_, except this one's frill was shorter in height but noticeably wider and not as erect. This one also appeared to be a juvenile, probably only half the size of his parents. Why this youngster was all alone was unclear, as horned dinosaurs were typically herd animals.

Not too far away was a large paddock surrounding a small pond that housed a flock of 20 or so feathered dinosaurs that Currie was even more familiar with, _Ornithomimus_, dinosaurs that were eerily similar in size, shape and coloration to modern ratites.

They seemed to be a different species from the ones Currie was familiar with, these ones had black heads with blue markings, which appeared to be exposed skin, running from the back of their head down their neck while the rest of their body, minus their legs and thighs, was covered in golden-brown shaggy plumage, though those were mainly the males, the females had more muted brown plumage with dark grey heads.

Most were adults, but Currie quickly noticed a brood of fluffy chicks following their mother who was resting by a patch of bushes. The chicks sported a striking pattern of horizontal stripes, which in the wild would have provided camouflage.

A 150 kg _Ornithomimus _was hardly fitting prey for a gracile 20 kg _Talos _but newborn chicks like these were ideal targets for this small predator. Currie stuck his head through the wooden bars, watching keenly to see if one chick would wander away from its mother.

But _Ornithomimus _were very vigilant dinosaurs and it didn't take long for the mother to spot him. She might have never seen a _Talos _before but she was still intimately familiar with troodonts and immediately reacted with aggression, jumping to her feet and screeching at the top of her lungs, alerting the rest of the flock.

Currie fleed from her charge and hid in some nearby bushes as the enraged mother's long neck came looming over the fence, looking everywhere for the small predator.

Ironically, troodonts and ornithomimosaurs were very similar, they were both opportunistic omnivores who would dine on both plants and small animals.

Currie knew that if the mother had managed to strike him down, he wouldn't have just suffered a broken back or shattered ribs but may as well have been eaten by the flock.

Nonetheless, the prospect of a potential food source kept him around, until he found out who was residing in-between the other two enclosures, a large predator. Two large predators in fact, which were kept separated in different pens by a tall, dividing wall.

Like with the horned dinosaur, they looked incredibly familiar even if Currie hadn't seen this exact species before.

They were tyrannosaurs, very similar to the _Bistahieversor _he had coexisted with, but these ones appeared to be adolescents based on their long legs and lankier builds, yet in terms of size they were closer to an adult _Bistahieversor_. Just how big could these tyrannosaurs get?

Currie was hardwired to fear these predators, as were most animals in Laramidia. These aptly named killers struck fear whenever they went across the continent.

Worse yet, the female quickly established herself as very irritable and aggressive. Currie didn't even notice her until he was jolted by her mighty roar and found her growling and glaring at him from the other side of the timber bars, her yellow eyes piercing into the small maniraptor who instantly reminded her of the nest raiders who had threatened her as a hatchling.

To say that Currie was mortified would be an understatement, made worse by the fact that he recalled the female tyrannosaur roaming free through the park the day he had arrived. And he didn't fail to see the large, ghastly scar her male neighbor was sporting on his face.

Currie didn't need any more incentive to hightail it out of there.

Which led him to his current position. He didn't stick around the park as it would be teeming right now with the bipedal mammals, and he was waiting until dusk to make his journey to the forest. He had inferred that the hairless mammals were likely diurnal and probably had poor night vision given how easy it was to steal from their kill at nighttime back at the banks of the estuary. They didn't seem very fast or agile either.

His kin were quite the opposite, their trademark large eyes gave them excellent night vision and they also had an acute sense of hearing, which has helped them carve out their niche as primarily nocturnal hunters in order to avoid the tyrannosaurs and certain species of raptor, which primarily went hunting during the daytime.

And they were quite nimble and fleet-footed, much faster and better runners than raptors, which allowed them to both hunt small and swift prey while also avoiding being eaten themselves. An omnivorous diet in contrast to their hypercarnivorous raptor relatives was another advantage during times of scarcity.

Their small, unimpressive teeth and relatively small sickle claw weren't good for much beyond catching lizards, mammals and the occasional bird, and weren't of much use for killing larger game or to ward off an attacking raptor like _Saurornitholestes_, hence why troodonts preferred avoiding confrontation.

They had never been on the top of the food chain, but their enigmatic and opportunistic way of life had worked well for them for tens of millions of years. During Currie's day, 74 million years ago, troodonts, as well as most types of dinosaurs, were at the peak of their diversity in Laramidia.

Different forms of these feathered generalists roamed the land, varying in shape and size, including a man-sized giant in Alberta and one species had even conquered the high Arctic of Alaska, where their sharp eyesight proved to be very useful during the long polar nights and they morphed into bulky carnivores more akin to raptors than traditional troodonts.

Most were usually solitary unless they found a mate and it would usually be the male who would be stuck brooding the nest while the female went hunting.

Although _Talos _and its kin were notorious nest raiders, as eggs were a nutritious source of food, they too were often susceptible to attacks from nest raiders and were usually ill-equipped to drive off more powerful theropods like _Saurornitholestes _or _Hagryphus_, or the large monitor lizard _Palaeosaniwa_, which is why a breeding pair usually built their nests in a well-hidden den within rock crevices or hollowed out trees.

Their usual home were dense, inland forests but young _Talos _without a mate or an established territory like Currie roamed farther and often exploited places seldom visited by dinosaurs. The estuaries that stretched across the eastern coast of the continent were such a place, as they generally weren't a suitable home for most dinosaurs besides freshwater hesperornithids. The constant threat from _Deinosuchus _was another important reason.

But that didn't stop intrepid travels from sporadically visiting the area. Currie and other rogue _Talos _were among them, as they quickly learned to exploit the sandy banks for various exotic carrion washed up from the great inland sea, which could range from tiny fish to a massive beached mosasaur if they were lucky.

While there, he had tried to raid a _Hagryphus _nest deep inside the coastal forest only to find himself fleeing from the angry mother when he ran across the bipedal mammals and quickly learned how they left meat all over their camp unguarded, which quickly drew the attention of the wily opportunists. Although the mammals kept chasing them away, the _Talos _kept on coming.

Alas, Currie was the one was too daring, which somehow led to him wounding up being trapped in this strange new world overrun by giant mammals.

From his vantage point in the cliff, he continued to observe the plain below him. A series of trumpeting noises diverted his attention to a small herd of distinctly large mammals, rivaling many of the plant-eating dinosaurs he was familiar with in terms of size.

Their facial features were quite confusing and alien, as they sported long trunks which they used to feed themselves, small tusks and massive floppy ears, and they were covered in wrinkly grey skin.

Except for one who stood out from the rest, sporting small ears but making up for it with huge curvy tusks, and it was covered from head to toe in shaggy brown fur. Was this some sort of extreme sexual dimorphism? If so it would make the flamboyant colorations of many male dinosaurs seem insignificant by comparison.

Another, nearly as massive mammal grazed away from the heard. With its bulky body, short legs and massive nasal horn it very much looked like a mammalian version of a horned dinosaur, more of a centrosaur than a chasmosaur though.

A loud, wailing honk made Currie look further ahead to see two of those gargantuan long-necked dinosaurs slowly lumbering about in the distance until their small heads reached the forest canopy.

Currie had never seen such dinosaurs before. Beyond their stupendous size which made the ground shake wherever they went, their anatomy was all kinds of confusing. They looked like if someone took the body of a typical plant-eating dinosaur and grafted the long neck and small head of an ornithomimosaur onto it.

At least by now, Currie had come to realize that they were docile vegetarians, and despite their terrifying size they were harmless. Ironically, being from the late Campanian, Currie and his species had only narrowly missed out on seeing the grand return of these long-necked behemoths to Laramidia after tens of millions of years of absence. Even more ironically, the dinosaurs he had met prior were in fact there to witness their comeback.

As the hours went by, waiting for the sun to set turned increasingly more boring, so Currie chose to take a nap, tucking his head under his wings and curling his tail around his body.

This was a strange new world, but troodonts had always been versitile creatures and Currie would simply have to adapt, just as his ancestors did for millions of years to survive in this ever changing world.

...

**That covers the park's Campanian residents, though Currie still evades capture. Sneaky little bastard XD**

**Note that the animals I didn't bother describing in detail are the ones I don't see the need to update in any significant way.**

**And as I've mentioned in the previous chapter, a lot of the animals from this episode were recast to fit in accordance with the fossil record of southern Laramidia, as **_**Troodon/Stenonychosaurus **_**and **_**Albertosaurus**_** are only known from the north, plus **_**Albertosaurus **_**hadn't evolved yet by the time the episode takes place. The crested duckbill would also be the southern **_**Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus **_**rather than the more familiar northern **_**Parasaurolophus walkeri**_**.**

**Also, I interpret the park's titanosaurs as **_**Daxiatitan binglingi**_**. I hear a lot of people claiming they're **_**Borealosaurus**_**, which is ridiculous as **_**Borealosaurus **_**is both too small and lived 30 million years after the episode's setting. **


End file.
